Literature
Appealing and not-so appealing
If Martin Amis isn’t entertaining you on every page, then what’s the point of him?
Are socially distanced festivals the future of entertainment?
Appledore book festival has paved the way for Covid-friendly entertainment in the UK
Eugenics and the intellectual left
To what extent should we separate an artist’s work from their period, character and ideas?
America’s Southern Gothic Moment
Why is the American south still regarded as repository for all the shortcomings of America?
Is artistic nepotism an evil – or a necessity?
Nepotism in the arts is very much alive and here to stay
The Dystopian Age of the Mask
How Ernst Jünger predicted the ubiquity of masks
Why you don’t want to be an F Scott Fitzgerald flapper
What kind of world did F Scott Fitzgerald create for his heroines a century ago?
Intellectual Red Bull
László Földényi’s essays are a collection that will leave you feeling sharp and more cultured, says Tibor Fischer
An awful warning
Ainsworth’s fate was sealed not how he wrote but what he placed at the heart of his stories
Super Thursday
The busiest day of the publishing calendar offers hope for some, but ruin for many
Most Read
The martyrdom of Young Bob
On ebbing power of the political influencer
Losing control of the narrative
The British establishment no longer sets the terms of public debate over migration
Grooming gangs and the truth
We should not give ammunition to deniers of the grooming gangs scandal
Babies need women
Leaving children with only men who are not their parents is foolish and dangerous
Stop ignoring the Islamisation of our democracy
The British state is bending to Islamism, not attempting to defeat it
The emperor’s new AI
A satirical X account is doing what the media class has failed to do, and report on the great AI delusion
Canis lupus labor
Europe is a wolf coming up the path to devour the Labour Party
By the by-elections
Do not expect major surprises or lasting change as a result of the latest Scottish by-elections
Paris cinema
There are no songs or movies about Paris in the winter
The pathologies of outdated ideologies
Our managerial elite will go the way of the Mamluks, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Moriori
Are automated auctions on the way?
New technology has a double edge
Peston’s Inbox
Kemi doesn’t give her kids Easter eggs
UnappEaling comedy
A “loose, loose reimagining” of Kind Hearts And Coronets does not really work
The problem with price freezes
Freezing prices is not half as simple (or cheap) as politicians often think
The memory wars
Poland and Ukraine must find some way to stop falling out over history
The Ghost Dance of Rejoin
There is no real argument for rejoining the EU — and nobody makes one